Aliasalpha: or the "you lost your account for no readily apparent reason without explanation or apology"

Delixe: Oh I have that one i'm quite proud of it.

OmegaX: People keep telling that but I've yet to see any proof. So far the compatibility fixes provided by GOG have been accomplished in the following ways:
- Editing DOSbox config file: anybody can do this but the GOG staff test their configuration against many different tests enviroments (every DOS game).
- Making a no-CD crack: crackers do it by reverse engineering the executables and it's highly probable that GOG simply reused those cracks (Arcanum and others).
- Programming some kind of wrapper for the game: the wrapper calls the exe so there is no need for the source code (AFAIK only Beyond Good and Evil does this and I read in the forum that some people avoid the wrapper because it causes problems for them).
- Creating a custom renderer: One of the Duke Nukem games required this to not crash but lots of people have created custom renderers for games like Deus Ex and other Unreal Engine games.
The only case in which I remember that the source code was used is Arx Fatalis but the original developers were the ones that created the patch and gave it to GOG.
Even if GOG did have access to the source code of some of the games it wouldn't be easy to modify them because first you need to understand how everything works and then make sure you don't introduce more bugs while fixing the game. I think that patching a game which you didn't develop yourself would cost too much to be worthwhile for a company like GOG.

lackoo1111: so what have you done ?

cogadh: Those are only the obvious ways compatibility has been accomplished and DRM has been removed. With access to the source code, whatever they did would be invisible to the end user, so we'd really never know. All we do know is that the GOG guys themselves have stated that they do sometimes get access to the source code and they have given me no reason to disbelieve them.
I agree, just having access to the code doesn't mean they can figure out what to do, but if a game is written in C++, then a C++ developer can "read" the code and figure it out; its just a language and if you understand the language, then you can understand what someone else was trying "say" with it. If they already know in advance what problem they are trying to fix, then they already know what kinds of things to look for in the code and fix. I do make it sound easy, when in reality it is not, but in the simplest terms, that is really all they need to do.

Narushima: Please, God, no achievements ! If I ever play Red Baron and see a little pop-up thingie telling me I downed my 50th enemy plane, I quit playing games forever.

bowlingotter: Well.. didn't realize a statistic would evoke such an emotional response!

OmegaX: The easy way to confirm if they changed something in the code would be comparing the binaries of the retail and GOG versions of the game. Also the change wouldn't be invisible because if they did change something then it should have been to fix an issue so the outcome would be visible. I believe they have the code for some of the games but so far I haven't seen any proof that they actually did anything with it.
I also know that given sufficient time almost any programmer can understand any given source code but the cost of doing so in man hours is far too great to be profitable when your market is so niche like old games. Why do you think Volition didn't release a patch fixing Saints Row 2 on the PC? It simply wasn't profitable for them to do so.

Narushima: I don't like being patronized.